Amidst all the Niger Uranium furor I almost missed some interesting economic news. Fortunately, commenter Stirling Newberry alerted me to a story in the Friday Washington Post: Number Crunchers vs. Recession. Said number crunchers are members of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) which, among many other things, is the most widely used source for dating the start and end of recessions. You’ve probably heard that the latest recession started in March of 2001 (notwithstanding Bush’s simultaneous attempts to say that 9/11 caused the recession and that it started under Clinton–on this topic, this Slate story is a must-read). But when, if ever, did the recession end? Well, there are two conceivable ways to get to the end zone in football. Normally a team scores by moving the ball past the goal line. On the other hand, they could keep the ball stationary and simply move the goal line. It looks like the NBER is doing the latter:

“If the committee were to rely on the same indicator to date the end of the slump, the recession would already have lasted for two years and three months, making it the longest since the vastly more serious downturn that began in 1929 and became the Great Depression…

Chances are, by giving far more weight to the GDP than it has in the past, the committee will decide before long to call an end to the 2001 recession, which many economists believe ended late that year…

This is the dating committee’s [new] official definition of a recession:

A recession is a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, visible in industrial production, employment, real income and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough

…But that language was sharply revised when the next update was posted last month on the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Web site:

The committee views real GDP as the single best measure of aggregate economic activity. In determining whether a recession has occurred and in identifying the approximate dates of the peak and the trough, the committee therefore places considerable weight on the estimate of real GDP issued by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce.”

My first thought upon reading this was “Hey, the NBER has the top economists in the country and is largely apolitical, so there’s not much of a story here.” My second thought was “On the other hand, the current President of the NBER is Marty Feldstein, who was Chairman of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1982-1984. It sure would be nice for Republicans if the Recession is formally announced to be over before November, 2004.”

All members are top-notch economists, but I don’t know most of their political affiliations. Fortunately, many economists on both the Left and Right recently decided to reveal their political leanings by signing one of two letters (I blogged about the letters here). Besides Feldstein, no members of the NBER dating committee signed the Republican Letter (scroll down). Frankel, Gordon, and both Romers signed the Anti-Tax Cut Letter. So I think it’s pretty tough to argue that the committee was stacked with Republican economists. Also, Prof. Frankel chaired Clinton’s CEA in the late 1990s.

Instead, the change most likely reflects genuine confusion induced by the historically unusual confluence of positive GDP and income growth accompanied by rising unemployment.

Still, while probably not politically motivated the focus on real GDP as the single best measure of aggregate economic activity” is troubling because it implies a focus only on the total income in the economy, not the distribution of that income. Under this logic a recession would not be in progress even at 20% unemployment, as long as the other 80% of the labor force had more-than-offsetting increases in income. But at least one in five people in this scenario would disagree with this conclusion.

AB

P.S. In the 1970s, economists thought recessions and inflation would not happen at the same time, so they had to come up with a new name for the new phenomenon: “stagflation”. The only phrase I’ve heard for the current situation is “jobless recovery”, but while acccurate, it’s not very catchy. Ideas?

White House officials issued a statement in Mr. Fleischer’s name that made clear that they no longer stood behind Mr. Bush’s statement.

How Mr. Bush’s statement made it into last January’s State of the Union address is still unclear. No one involved in drafting the speech will say who put the phrase in, or whether it was drawn from the classified intelligence estimate.

It’s starting to look like I was right and Rove made, or allowed to be made, a rare but major PR miscalculation. Today, Colin Powell joined in the mess and didn’t help matters for the administration; see NYT, CalPundit, Likely Story, and Josh Marshall.

But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true.

But, this is surely true: during the time that the false information was knowingly placed in the State of the Union speech and throughout the following period in which misleading stories were disseminated, no one in the administration was on the giving or receiving end of oral sex. Go about your business.

When you change your story after the fact, contradictions and inconsistencies are likely to emerge. Earlier, I pointed out a few in Tony Blair’s testimony before the House of Commons. Today, Rumsfeld said this:

“The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit [of weapons of mass destruction]. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light — through the prism of our experience on 9-11.”

I instantly thought that was an outrageous statement, but I didn’t realize quite how much so until Rick in Davis pointed it out. Rick is co-blogger of at The Likely Story, a new blog that you should definitely check out.

“I’m not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein — because he had a weapons program.”

But, as Rick notes, either they merely saw existing weapons in a new light (Rumsfeld) or Iraq had actual programs to produce new weapons (Bush). What to conclude from this contradiction about Rumsfeld’s opinion of Bush’s position? Go read Rick’s entire post.

On Tuesday, the White House issued a statement that “Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq’s attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech.”

Today, the AP reports on a national assessment showing that 12th graders can’t write well: “…about half of seniors, within a 25-minute time limit, could not provide an organized answer that showed they understand their task and their audience. “

To be announced tomorrow: Ice melts when heated!, The elderly die at a greater rate than the young!, and Republicans consistently finance spending with deficits!

A woman has set her Madrid home on fire while cooking up a potion in an attempt to imitate the fictional wizard Harry Potter (news – web sites), emergency services say….For want of more magical ingredients, the woman cooked up a potion of water, oil, alcohol and toothpaste, local media reported on Wednesday. It was unclear what spell she was trying to weave.

The Capitol Hill Blue story cited below is a hoax–Capitol Hill Blue founder Doug Thompson now alleges that he was intentionally deceived by someone pretending to be Terry Wilkinson for the last 20 years (Thompson: “Erasing the stories doesn’t erase the fact that we ran articles containing information that, given the source, was probably inaccurate. And it doesn’t erase the sad fact that my own arrogance allowed me to be conned”).

Fortunately, I didn’t put too much emphasis on it at the time, pointing out that the paper has an odd motto and tabloid stories on the front page, and warning “So don’t get too excited about this story”. I guess that every story containing the words “Niger”, “Uranium”, and “Iraq” should be viewed very skeptically.

AB

P.S. In fact, I’m now so suspicious of outlandish tales of nefarious Republican plots that I’ll think twice before linking to stories like this one (slashdot discussion here) in the future.

QUESTION: Do you still believe they were trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa?

BUSH: Right now?

QUESTION: No, were they? The statement you made…

BUSH: One thing is for certain, he’s not trying to buy anything right now. If he’s alive, he’s on the run. And that’s to the benefit of the Iraqi people. But, look, I am confident that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program. In 1991, I will remind you, we underestimated how close he was to having a nuclear weapon. Imagine a world in which this tyrant had a nuclear weapon. In 1998, my predecessor raided Iraq, based upon the very same intelligence. And in 2003, after the world had demanded he disarm, we decided to disarm him. And I’m convinced the world is a much more peaceful and secure place as a result of the actions.

A few non sequiturs followed by an exaggeration.

I suppose the world did demand that Saddam disarm, as expressed by UN resolutions. But Bush’s statement seems to imply that the world demanded a US invasion.

The San Antonio Republican wants his colleagues to create an independent redistricting panel. Republicans would name four members to the body, and Democrats would name four. Those eight Texans would then select the all-important ninth member. Together, the group would draw the lines for Texas’ political boundaries in 2011 and every 10 years thereafter.

I think leaving the issue alone is still the wiser plan–there was a battle that ended up in the courts and a map was drawn; it’s over now and Republicans should move on. If you are conservative and don’t agree with that last sentence, think back to, say, November and December of 2000 and ask yourself whether you gave that very advice to any Democrats. Seriously, though, it’s a battle that should only be fought once every ten years, in accordance with the Constitution (“The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct”).

But if that’s simply not an option then Wentsworth’s plan is a good second best. One problem with the commission concept is that whatever districts they came up with would still end up in court. Enacting the commission idea might also require amending the Texas Constitution, in which case it’s unlikely the process could be completed before the 2004 elections.

“It’s a silly map. I can’t support that. I can’t support splitting my county.”

Currently the Texas Senate is not even debating redistricting but rather debating whether to debate redistricting, a process that takes a 2/3 majority votte to end. However, it’s still not a great outcome:

Loosely following state Senate district boundaries probably would cost Democrats at least four U.S. House districts, because Republicans hold 19 of the 31 Senate seats. They hold 15 of the state’s 32 U.S. House seats.

However, I’m not sure that this would really be that bad. Just because 19 of 31 state Senate seats are Repblican does not necessarily meand that those districts would elect a Republican representative to the U.S. House. Incumbency is a big advantage and Demcorats would, by virtue of their current majority in the U.S. House, have that advantage. Still, it would likely cost the Democrats more than one seat. Off the Kuff has a nice news round-up.